Social Policy Research 80 - July 1995
Social backgrounds and post-birth experiences of young parents

A significant number of teenage parents have experienced disadvantaged childhoods, and after the birth of their children their standard of living was below average, according to recent research. Kathleen Kiernan of the London School of Economics used longitudinal data from the National Child Development Study to investigate the social, economic and educational backgrounds of young parents and to examine their post-birth experiences. It was found that:

• Low educational attainment was the most powerful single factor associated with on the chances of becoming a young parent. Boys and girls whose school performance improved between the ages of 7 and 16 were among the least likely to become parents at a young age.
• Teenage mothers and young men who become fathers before the age of 22 were also more likely to come from families with low socio-economic status where financial hardship was reported.
• The chances of becoming a teenage mother were also linked to having a mother who had herself given birth as a teenager, and to emotional difficulties during childhood and adolescence.
• Half the teenage mothers who were single when their babies were born went on to cohabit with or marry the father. One in three were still living with the father when they were 33.
• The majority of teenage mothers (63 per cent) who were cohabiting when their babies were born were no longer living with the father when they were 33. Over half those who were married at the time of birth were continuing to live with their husbands.
• Those who became parents at an early age tended to have larger families by the age of 33, and were less likely to own their own homes and more likely to have lower incomes than other families. They were more likely to be receiving income support and ­ in a small minority of cases ­ to have experience of homelessness.

Introduction

This study used information from the National Child Development Study (NCDS), begun in 1958, to establish the social, economic and educational backgrounds of the women and men who became parents at an early age. In addition, the longitudinal data, last gathered when the study cohort were aged 33, allowed an examination of their subsequent experiences as parents, compared with those who were older when they started a family.

Unlike other European countries, teenage fertility rates in the United Kingdom have not declined noticeably during the past 15 years. The proportion of teenage births occurring outside marriage has, meanwhile, risen sharply from 47 per cent in 1981 to 85 per cent in 1993. In contrast with other extra-marital births, fewer than half are registered by both parents living at the same address, and more than a third are registered by the mother alone.

Characteristics of young parents

The research focused on women who had a child before their twentieth birthdays and men who became fathers before they were 22. On that definition, 15 per cent of mothers and 14 per cent of fathers in the NCDS sample were defined as 'young parents'. Compared with other young people they were:

• More likely to have had mothers who were teenagers themselves when they first gave birth. One in four young mothers (26 per cent) and one in five young fathers (22 per cent) had teenage mothers, compared with one in eight (13 per cent) women and men who became parents at a later stage.
• More likely to have parents whose socio-economic status was low and whose families had experienced financial hardship. Three in four young parents came from families with low socio-economic status, compared with just over half all other parents. Teenage mothers were nearly five times more likely ­ and young fathers nearly three times more likely ­ to come from families that had financial problems when they were aged 7 and 16, than children whose parents reported no money troubles.
• Less likely to have performed well in school and to have completed their education with qualifications. Young parents were twice as likely to have registered low scores (lowest quartile) in reading and mathematical tests when they were 7 and 16. Six out of ten teenage mothers (61 per cent) had no qualifications by the time they were 23, compared with fewer than one in four women (23 per cent) who became mothers when they were older.
• More likely to have experienced emotional difficulties while growing up. Thirty-eight per cent of girls and 19 per cent of boys who were assessed as having serious behaviour problems at both 7 and 16 went on to become young parents. The same was true of only 7 per cent of girls and 6 per cent of boys who had few observable problems on both occasions

The data showed that young parenthood was generally more common among children who were performing poorly in school, who displayed emotional difficulties and whose families reported financial hardship when they were 7 and 16. It proved illuminating, however, to look at men and women who had problems on only one of those two occasions. For example, 13 to 15 per cent of boys whose parents had money problems when they were age 7 or 16 became young fathers. This compared with 25 per cent of those from families where such difficulties were persistent, and 8 per cent where no problems had been reported. Similarly, 17 per cent of girls who had few behavioural problems at the age of 7, but whose emotional well-being was rated poorly at 16, went on to become young mothers. So did 18 per cent of those whose marked behavioural problems at 7 were no longer present at 16. These figures compared with 38 per cent of girls who had poor scores at both ages and 7 per cent with good scores on both occasions.

Educational improvement between 7 and 16

In the case of educational achievement, there was strong evidence that an improving school record was associated with a reduced likelihood that children would become parents at an early age.

Those whose ratings had risen from a lower score at age 7 to a higher score at age 16 were no more likely to become young parents than those who scored above the median at both ages. Indeed, just 5 per cent of girls whose scores had risen in this way became teenage mothers, compared with 3 per cent of girls whose scores were consistently good. Among boys, 8 per cent of the educational 'improvers' became young fathers, compared with 4 per cent of those with two sets of scores in the top 50 per cent.

Conversely, girls (18 per cent) and boys (13 per cent) whose performance had deteriorated were nearly as likely to become young parents as those whose scores were consistently low (19 per cent and 18 per cent respectively).

Attitudes to marriage and conception

Among the childhood factors considered, there was little that distinguished the experiences of young parents whose babies were born within marriage from the backgrounds of those who were single or cohabiting when they gave birth. No statistically significant differences emerged.

However, young people who had expressed a positive preference for marrying and starting a family young when interviewed aged 16 were more likely than their contemporaries to do just that. Twice as many teenage mothers (36 per cent) had expressed a previous preference for parenthood before reaching 21, compared with girls who became mothers at an older age (18 per cent). The same was true of 25 per cent of young fathers, compared with 14 per cent who were aged 23 or over when they first fathered a child.

It might have been anticipated that young parents whose babies were conceived and born within marriage would be more likely to have expressed an earlier preference in that direction. Yet there proved to be no significant difference compared with other young parents ­ suggesting that the pre-disposition to have a child when young was independent of any thoughts about marriage, cohabitation or single parenthood.

When they were 33, parents in the NCDS were asked if they had planned to have babies when they did and whether any kind of birth control had been used around the time of conception. The answers suggest that only one in four (26 per cent) teenage mothers had planned their pregnancy. However, 67 per cent of those who were married at the time of conception had meant to become pregnant, compared with 26 per cent of mothers who were cohabiting, 17 per cent who had married during their pregnancy and 8 per cent who had no live-in relationship before the birth. It also transpired that only one in four of those whose babies were unplanned had been using any form of birth control around the time of conception. Half had been having unprotected sex for three months or less when they became pregnant.

The importance of life experiences

Since many of the background factors associated with early parenthood were interrelated, the study included a statistical analyses to assess their relative influence. This confirmed the strong connection between certain early life experiences and becoming a young parent, especially in relation to girls who became teenage mothers.

In the case of young fathers, it appeared that having a mother who had been a teenage mother herself, and the level of emotional well-being, were not significant in their own right once socio-economic status, educational performance and other variables had been taken into account.

Educational attainment, meanwhile, emerged as the most powerful single influence over the probability of becoming a parent at a young age. The connection with poor school performance at age 16 was, however, stronger than with poor performance at 7.

The probabilities of teenage motherhood

The probabilities of becoming a teenage mother were calculated for girls with differing sets of characteristics.

At one extreme were women whose educational scores were low at age 16, whose families had experienced financial hardship at either 7 or 16, who had emotional and behavioural problems at either age, whose mothers had given birth as teenagers, and who had expressed a positive preference for early childbearing. Of this group, 56 per cent became teenage mothers. At the other end of the spectrum, only 3 per cent of women became teenage mothers who had high educational scores, whose families had no money troubles, who had little or no emotional and behavioural problems, whose mothers had not started a family in their teens and who had not said they wanted a child at an early age.

Post-birth experiences

The study went on to consider whether the experiences of young parents were notably different following the birth of their first baby from those of older parents. The comparison found that by the time they were aged 33:

• Mothers who had start childbearing in their teens tend to have larger families than women who became parents when they are older. One in five of the teenage mothers had four or more children by the age of 33.
• Those who had been young parents were also less likely to be owner-occupiers than other families: around 50 per cent, as compared with 70 per cent or more of the older parents.
• Unemployment was twice as common among young fathers (11 per cent) compared with other fathers, and both men and women who had been young parents were more likely to be living on low incomes.
• Men and women who had been young parents were more likely than other parents to be receiving income support ­ namely 21 per cent of former teenage mothers and 13 per cent of former young fathers.
• Although just 4 per cent of those interviewed reported being made homeless during the previous ten years, the proportion rose to 7 per cent of women had been teenage mothers and 6 per cent of men who had been young fathers. Cohabiting teenage mothers had the highest rate of reported homelessness (18 per cent).

Teenage mothers' partnerships

By age 33 there was a good deal of change in the family circumstance of teenage mothers.

• The vast majority of single teenage mothers (95 per cent) had formed a partnership, including 76 per cent who had married. Most partnerships were formed within three years of the birth.
• Half (52 per cent) of the single teenage mothers had married or cohabited with the father of their child and just over a third (35 per cent) were still living with him.
• Just over a third of teenage mothers who had been cohabiting when their first child was born were continuing to live with the father.
• Over half the young mothers who were married were still living with the fathers, and this was the case whether their babies had been conceived before or after the wedding. However, more than four out of ten were separated or divorced.
• Three out of ten former married teenage mothers were now living with a different partner, as were four out of ten who had been cohabiting. The former cohabiting teenage mothers were the most likely of all to have formed subsequent partnerships ­ including 18 per cent who had lived in three or more different unions.
• Former teenage mothers who had given birth outside marriage were more likely to be living as lone parents than those who were married at the time of the baby's birth. The average time spent as a lone parent varied between 5 years for former single teenage mothers to 3 years for former married teenage mothers.

Conclusions

In the mid-1970s, relatively full employment and the wider availability of manual and unskilled jobs made it easier for young people to marry and start a family within a few years of leaving school at the minimum age. The industrial economy that allowed an early transition to adulthood has since been replaced by a service economy that offers low wages to those without qualifications and training to compete for better-paid jobs. This has contributed to a tendency for most young people to postpone marriage and parenthood. The researcher concludes, however, that those who deviate from this pattern by becoming parents at an early age will run even greater risks of social and economic disadvantage than this study has identified among the NCDS cohort, who are now entering their late thirties. Although there are dramatically fewer births to teenagers compared with the 1960s, and teenage fertility rates have changed little since the 1980s, there is every reason to believe that early parenthood is intensifying as a social problem.

About this study

The study made use of the longitudinal National Child Development Study, which originally included 17,414 children born in the first week of March 1958. Members of the cohort were most recently interviewed in 1991 at age 33 when questions were included about their partnership and childbearing experiences. Logistic regression analyses were applied to data on the childhood factors found to be associated with early parenthood to determine their relative importance.

Further information

A more detailed report, Transition to Parenthood: Young Mothers, Young Fathers ­ associated factors and later life experiences, Welfare State Discussion Paper No.113 by Kathleen Kiernan, is available from Jane Dickson, Welfare State Programme, STICERD, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2 2AE. The work forms part of a continuing project on transitions to adulthood with Martin Richards and Virginia Morrow, University of Cambridge and Helen Sweeting and Patrick West, MRC, Medical Sociology Unit, Glasgow University.

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